Guild Wars 2

Hi guys! Me and three friends 4 man Arah p4 almost daily, the only times we don’t are if real life gets in the way. Anyway you guys don’t care about that.

Our party comp is: 3 Guardians and a Ranger (gasp!). We aren’t optimized for full DPS, we don’t really care to be, the path takes us 2 hours but we enjoy it. If we wanted to go faster we’d exploit and skip but that isn’t our style.

One Guardian runs more tanky, just as a security net in case we have any problems he’s able to res us easily. Another one is running 20/0/0/25/25, because the Guardian enjoys the traits in the lines selected. A Third runs 20/15/30/0/5, justifying the trait set up for Meditations and 30% Crit Damage. Our ranger runs a Longbow with two Drakes. The last 3 run full Berserker.

Again, we aren’t looking for full 100% efficiency, we all know what to do in terms of optimizing DPS. We are a close knit group, so we joke around and try to brag about who is dealing the most damage (obv not the tanky one but the other 3). I want your opinions on who you all think has the most DPS. The Ranger at one point said “I don’t consider you two DPS”, to the two Guardians, and would talk about his Rapid Fire hitting for 20k sometimes. The tanky Guardian once said that “all i know is its feels like we’re 2 manning”, referring to himself and the Ranger. Now, he said that due to the other two Guardians going down frequently, but the Ranger claims to be able to deal more DPS than the Guardians. What are your thoughts, without knowing anything else, which build do you think should be hitting the hardest, and why?

Ranger using rapid fire. All I needed to know.

That doesn’t exactly answer anything. You may dislike Longbow Ranger, but if he’s running an optimal equipment set/trait set compared to a Guardian running optimal equipment, with not so optimal traits, which is dealing more damage?

Well, given that they all have berserker gear, It will come down to the traits, weapons, runes, sigils and class.

You don’t list which traits they take, so I cannot assume any modifiers, thus I can only look at the raw stats from the trait lines, that said, if the 20/0/0/25/25 guardian has 5 boons and less then 100% endurance, he will be doing more damage then the guardian running 20/15/30/0/5, because the 15% damage modifiers from the two 25 point traits in honor and virtues (15% assuming 5 boons) is greater damage then 30% critical damage. However, if the guardian with 30 points into valor, has taken firey wrath and the other guardian hasn’t, then that guardian would be doing more damage thus far.

Now we have to look at weapons, given that a guardians greatest dps would come from sword/focus+greatsword, and you don’t list which weapons they take. If one of the guardians was using a hammer, staff, or something else, that guardian would be doing less dps.

You mention that the two berserker guardians are going down frequently, thus I must consider that they are not too experienced as players, and/or do not know the content properly, (I, as a berserker guardian, rarely go down, if that says anything) thus the ones staying alive would be doing more damage overall, as I am assuming a lot here, I have to consider them all having similar damage.

If one of the guardians had Scholar runes and was able to stay above 90% for 25% of the fights, he would be doing more damage.

If one of the guardians had force sigils/bloodlust stacks, he would have increased damage.

As for the ranger, I have zero idea what traits they are using, I also have no other information other then “longbow” which, in particular makes me think that they are a “bearbow” and contributes little to the group overall (knowing that longbow is NOT a good PvE dps weapon for rangers, had you said something like sword/x/greatsword, I would be thinking differently) also, a 20k rapid fire is unlikely unless they have all damage traits/and you are mightstacking/vulnerable stacking, so I will assume something like a 30/30 build.

Sigh, its a real pain, however, with the information given, all I can say is that none of those guys are optimal and doing large amounts of DPS, thus, they are probably all doing similar amounts of DPS.

And don’t ask me to math, its too early for that and there are too many assumptions I would have to make.

Edit: I also agree with Eberle’s post, lol ^^

What I mean is. If the ranger is using longbow, he can’t really have room to talk down to you about dps >_>

Longbow is a burst weapon and then kitten poor for damage over time. It’s a huge loss after rapid fire sitting there doing autos till swap is off cooldown.

Seeing those kind of builds that people use to run in other professions makes me think how warrior is OP for pve. If you had a zerker warrior in your group there would be no doubt of who is dealing more dps. A sword ranger may have awesome dps, but the weapon is just awful, i would like to see a ranger fighting alphard and being able to dodge that pull while using sword.

A zerker warrior is naturally tanky, have lots of blocks, endure pain, have an easy time skipping stuff and so on, and they dont need to sacrifice survivability for that, people that run shout heal builds are deluded if they think that those 1.5k heals are helping then in anything, a dps build actually increases your survivability on a warrior making it easier to rally.

Just tell to your friends to lvl up a warrior and leave just one guardian in the group, it will make things much easier.

Oh, and even if there is anyone that can dodge alphards pull with sword ranger the pet cant dodge, thats another fight where you just want to kill the pet right at the beginning.

Casmurro.9046:

Seeing those kind of builds that people use to run in other professions makes me think how warrior is OP for pve. If you had a zerker warrior in your group there would be no doubt of who is dealing more dps. A sword ranger may have awesome dps, but the weapon is just awful, i would like to see a ranger fighting alphard and being able to dodge that pull while using sword.

A zerker warrior is naturally tanky, have lots of blocks, endure pain, have an easy time skipping stuff and so on, and they dont need to sacrifice survivability for that, people that run shout heal builds are deluded if they think that those 1.5k heals are helping then in anything, a dps build actually increases your survivability on a warrior making it easier to rally.

Just tell to your friends to lvl up a warrior and leave just one guardian in the group, it will make things much easier.

Oh, and even if there is anyone that can dodge alphards pull with sword ranger the pet cant dodge, thats another fight where you just want to kill the pet right at the beginning.

Alphard is path 2, we do path 4 :p.

To update things: Runes and stuff don’t really matter, assume its all the same, just take the trait setups at face value, running the proper traits in the lines.

Aside from the Guardians going down, that just requires practice, if they do go down, obviously they have less DPS, I know that, but what if they’re staying up the entire fight.

you and your friends seem rather set in your ways, but I would suggest at least having a spotter/frost spirit ranger

the guardian 20/0/0/25/25 is probably the least terrible build since it gets a number of damage modifiers, though it’s still pretty horrible for DPS.

It’s not that, we just don’t care about optimization. we’re fully aware that what we have isn’t 100% the best, but we take DPS and mix in our own little variety. The Ranger does use Spotter and Frost Spirit, and sits on Longbow hitting for around 4,000 with his auto attacks.

The speed of the auto attacks is where you run into issues, I don’t think it’s likely he’s outdpsing you.

This probably isn’t the best place to be asking such questions.

And for him to be hitting that much, he would be at max range, away from everyone else, getting no buffs of bonuses and contributing nothing.

Your rangers getting 20k with rapid fire? There are screens of a warrior getting 93k with 100b

And here’s the proof. My bad 91k

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/warrior/Post-your-highest-Hundred-Blades

I would recommend getting the dps display that was linked on reddit a month or so ago, and do some tests on vet giants. Time the kills. Otherwise its just guesswork.

Sigils and runes actually matter. So do potions.
Given the odd trait points your guardians took I’ll just assume they camp staff or use scepter/torch or whatever that guy with long youtube videos about nothing recommends.
So yea. Ranger. Totally. Longbow is great dps. It really is. Aside from ruining any attempts of stacking and getting no buffs longbow hits like a truck at max range.